1. Field of the Technology
The present disclosure relates generally to communications in wireless local area networks (WLANs), and more particularly to load control methods and apparatus for wireless APs of WLANs in support of legacy terminals which prevents excessive loading on any AP so that quality of service is not compromised.
2. Description of the Related Art
In wireless communication networks, such as wireless local area networks (WLANs) which operate in accordance with 802.11-based standards, wireless access points (APs) are configured to communicate with a number of mobile communication devices which request service as a client. Each AP has a limited amount of usable capacity for handling communication information, however, beyond which communications is compromised. When the usable capacity of an AP is reached due to a large traffic load to/from clients accessing the WLAN through the AP, system adjustments may need to be made by limiting data rates to/from selected clients or to every client equally in order to provide the appropriate service to all requesting clients. This is undesirable, as the quality of service (QoS) for a given client may he unnecessarily compromised. If measures are not appropriately taken, however, data throughput will suffer.
Accordingly, what are needed are methods and apparatus for APs in WLANs to prevent or otherwise reduce the likelihood of overloaded AP conditions so that a high quality of service is maintained in the WLAN. Preferably, such methods and apparatus should accommodate existing legacy client terminals without requiring changes thereto.